The present invention relates to methods and systems for providing controlled access to various different locations and/or objects. More specifically, the present invention relates to an automated system whereby animals are tagged with an ID device are reliably and consistently allowed access to various locations and/or objects, such as food contained within a food delivery device dish for example.
Managing the amount of food an animal eats is a difficult task when multiple animals are required to be fed. Many feeding systems have been tried in the past including those that attempt to manage feeding through specific animal identification methods including using radio frequency identification. Failure to properly manage an animal's food intake can result in overweight and unhealthy animal. Currently more than 50% of companion animals in the United States are overweight.
Much of the prior art in companion food delivery devices utilizing an RFID system focus on the combination of RFID as a generalization combined with a specific food delivery device geometry such as a rotating cover, traditional pivoting doors, or an opening & closing drawer. These food delivery devices fail to perform due to a lack of understanding of the complexity physics of an RFID system and/or animal's natural habits and lack of high order reasoning capability and therefore have either never made it to market or fail to work properly in the marketplace.
In prior art RFID systems, the animal must either put its head in a box and or be in a specified area directly in front of the food delivery device for the system to work at all. Further due to the properties of these systems the orientation of the tag and other uncontrollable aspects of the environment can render the system nonfunctional in unpredictable ways for the animal. The resulting lack of function results in products not delivering the desired outcome of better food management. Increasing power to resolve this results in a significant cost increase to manufacture and/or possible issues with government regulations.
RFID systems are also well understood for use in large area and or large number of animals or objects. In order to meet the needs of large area coverage with consistent performance, these systems include multiple and diversely located antennas powerful transceivers and complex communication methods resulting in a very high cost system. Therefore there is a need for a system which is simple and low cost with an RFID system built into a unitary structure that can identify and manage the unique needs of multiple animal interaction with objects such as feeding devices, litter boxes, waterers, toys and other objects which an animal may interact with. The present invention relates generally to an improved radio frequency identification (RFID) system. More specifically, the present invention relates to a RFID access control system that reliably operates at a well defined medium range and low power in contrast to prior art RFID systems.
Generally, to date RFID applications generally operate in very short or very long range arrangements because the requirements for reliable communication at distances of about 3 feet is not something that the larger RFID industry has had to create operational system for. As a result, existing RFID applications are focused at either operational ranges of below 6 inches range or up to a hundred feet or more. Currently RFID systems with stringent functional requirements that operate between about 6 inches to about 3 feet are higher in cost and typically utilized in industrial applications.
In certain controlled access systems that rely in RFID, the RFID must be consistently read so that the product responds the same each time regardless of time of day, temperature in the room proximity to appliances either on or off. If the response is not consistent in an animal access system for example, then the animal will get mixed signals when trying to eat or not be allowed to eat. Inconsistency will cause problems for the animals. For example if an animal that is tagged to allow access to a food delivery device finds that sometimes it gets access and sometimes it does not then it will become confused and or aggravated and develop anxiety and further eating issues when the goal is to reduce eating issues. In a further example, if an animal is locked out of one food delivery device learns that it can occasionally beat the system because the system does not always sense it fast enough, it will keep trying to steal food. Conversely, if the system works nearly all the time then the animal will realize there is no reward and stop trying to steal food from that food delivery device and focus on the one to which it allowed access.
The problem is that in contrast to much of the prior art, the system must function in near to 100% of the covered space around the food delivery device (or other product) at a very high level of reliability, because if there is a null or dead zone resulting from poor antenna arrangement or nearness of a dish washer or other metal appliance which reflects the signal in a way not intended by the designer. The animal may find this poor coverage area and learn it can sneak up on the system and therefore steal food. Again once this happens it will continue to do this which reduces the effectiveness of the product.
Still further the RFID system must have sufficient range to allow the system to sense the animal approaching and open early enough so as not to make the animal wait for the food, but even more important again the system must sense the aggressive animal that is not supposed to get to the food in that food delivery device and close before it can steal the food.
Finally, the RFID system must not have too much range or it will sense animals that are waiting away from either their food delivery device or the one they are locked out of, or perhaps just walking by. If the food delivery device senses these tags outside of the immediate space around the food delivery device then it may cause problems for the animal that is eating at the food delivery device by the door closing then opening then closing.
There is therefore a need for an automatic system that controls access to an object or location when the assigned/tagged animal approaches while also recognizing all other animals in its proximity in order to limit access when those animals or people approach. It is a further object of the present invention to provide a system that controls access to an object or location in a manner that employs RFID technology such that constant and very reliable operation is achieved in a well-defined range of up to 3 feet with minimized false operation and interference.